Los Angeles riot in 1992- "Rodney King"

This research analyzes the logical fallacies used in the essay titled "Gays in the Military." It will set forth the main idea of the article and then describe the errors in logic that make up its rhetorical strategy. The purpose of "Gays in the Military" is to argue against a policy permitting homosexuals to serve in the U.S. armed forces. The rhetorical strategy used to make that overall argument is fraught with logical fallacies, which makes the anonymous author's ethos highly questionable.

We begin with the first sentence, which asserts that gays in the military invade the privacy of straights. That is a nonsequitur. The statement offers a conclusion that does not necessarily follow from the argument. The privacy of heterosexuals does not depend on the mere presence of homosexuals in their environment. Only behavior--that is, action or speech--can do that. Mere proximity is not the same as a threat, but that is what the writer wants to suggest.

"To ask heterosexual men to share barracks and showers with homosexuals is like asking women soldiers to share . . . with the male soldiers." That is a false analogy because it assumes that women soldiers have not been asked to share private facilities with soldiers under certain conditions. Modern military practice does have men and women training and serving together and sleeping in coed conditions in combat, but outside combat conditions, men and women are "berthed" or "billeted" separately--for example on different floors or wings if in the same barracks. Gender integration is continually under review in the military and Congress, chiefly because heterosexual military men have been identified as sexual harassers of women. But that has nothing to do with the sexual orientation of men in barracks, for homosexual...